Stuff

Lord Ashcroft has released a good selection of new constituency polls, covering some interesting constituencies. Full details are here.

The least intersting is probably High Peak – a largely run of the mill Con -v- Lab marginal. Ashcroft previously polled it in February, finding a wafer thin one point Labour lead. In the second survey the Tories are now ahead by 2 points, but the changes are within the margin of error – it still looks like a seat on a knife edge.

He then looked at two seats that were effectively three-way marginals in 2010 – Colne Valley and Bristol North West – both seats the Conservatives won with the Lib Dems in second place, but Labour an extremely close third. In both seats the Lib Dems have collapsed completely and they are now Con -v- Lab marginals, in Bristol North West the Conservatives have a healthy nine point lead, in Colne Valley it is again on a knife-edge, with the Tories just two points ahead.

Moving on Lord Ashcroft polled Bristol West. This is one of the few Lib Dem seats we haven’t had a constituency poll of yet, but more interestingly it is one of the Green party’s main target seats for the election. The poll suggests they will fall well short – while it shows the Greens moving up to second place with 25% of the vote, they are far behind Labour on 38%.

Finally Lord Ashcroft polled two UKIP targets. One was Thurrock, an ultra-marginal between Labour and the Conservatives at the last election that appears to be one of UKIP’s best hopes for a gain – here Ashcroft found a four point UKIP lead over Labour in second place, the Tories just a point behind. The other was Rochester and Strood, UKIP’s by-election victory last year. Today’s Ashcroft poll gives the Conservatives the advantage in trying to retake it – CON 36%, LAB 24%, LDEM 3%, UKIP 33%.

587 Responses to “New Lord Ashcroft marginal polls”

What is to stop Labour (or Tories) simply repeal the FTPA as part of its C&S deal with those it forms a govt with?

Is it in any party’s interest to keep the FTPA?

Well it can’t simply be repealed because of various technical things to do with Royal Prerogative – something has to be put in it’s place and when you come to deciding exactly what between different Parties, you will get endless fun.

Even if you can manage to get a Bill to restore the situation so it is effectively the same as it was previously, the only Parties that will be in favour will be those who:

(a) Provide the current PM who will then regain the power to call an election at their whim

AND

(b) Are certain that they will gain seats when that next election is called

Otherwise they’d just be turkeys passing a law to say Christmas can be whenever their enemies feel like it.

Now (a) and (b) can only be satisfied by a Party that has an overall majority. Which isn’t the case now or likely in two weeks’ time. Even then there’s good polling evidence that the public like the FTPA[1] and even that individual MPs back it. So any government wanting to get rid of it will face opposition from both the people and from their own backbenchers. The Lords may also not want to cooperate.

[1] They’re pretty evenly split over whether it should be four or five years, but generally think it a good idea.

It’s a quid pro quo where the timing could be tricky. The big party will want it a.s.a.p. while the smaller ones might not, and if we have a rainbow alliance will enough people want it at the same time?

It’s this more than any point of principle that makes me think it might be difficult to get rid of.

Since the 1970s Westminster has passed power up (to EU) and down (to devolved institutions and to London etc with more to come perhaps) and I therefore think a small reduction of MPs seems proportionate.

I volunteer with EB’s team and I would disagree about leaflets. Firstly Andrea’s leaflets are delivered by post whereas Ed’s are delivered by activists. Because leaflets are delivered in a more accurate way locally I would suggest your 10 to 1 is probably not one of our targets.

Last time I looked Ladbrokes made Ed a 1/33 shot for the seat (in from 1/7) which is “too short” but hopefully it indicates the chance he stands.

I said yesterday that from this Fri to next Fri I expect the TOries to average 1% more (perhaps 0.5% with rounding!) so I had to go for 34/34 with Yougov given their inclination to give labour leads! 34/34 with them is equivalent to a 1% Tory lead….

I suspect a lot of Clegg’s comments recently about (essentially) “I would support a Conservative government rather than a Labour one” are laser-focussed on one specific segment of the electorate, i.e. Conservative voters in Sheffield Hallam.

Interesting.. Seems to me that getting rid of FTPA is one of these things you need to do right at the start, so it would either have to be agreed and passed at the outset (in return for “sweeteners” to the smaller parties required) or not at all.

ROBONTHEROAD
I don’t gamble.. but speaking to lots I do not know anyone who will vote for eb.

I suppose it depends if you are canvassing in particular parts of a ward, speaking to friends and family or whatever. Such conversations give fantastic insight into parts of the electorate but don’t always reflect the full range of views in a constituency. Hence polls and broader patterns have to be taken into account. It may be that you are talking to the ‘majority’ in your area or maybe not…. Its hard to call a seat on such conversations though.

From the latest YG we can only conclude that #Villagate’s effects have been so harmful that they’ve not only hurt David Cameron but Ed Miliband as well, because they’re often seen together and thus associated in the public mind. No other explanation and I expect to see this analysis replicated across the Sunday front pages.

You sound a bit down. We won’t agree on the poster, but it doesn’t matter. I have always appreciated your inquisitive questions, when I made a generalised, and unsustainable claim, and hence these made my thoughts focused. I’m not sure if you do it with a helping intention, but helping is the outcome.

Apart from one party’s role I really don’t think the outcome of these elections matters (but because of that party it matters a lot). There’s very little room for manoeuvrings for anybody. I think this is the main thing in this election. It is the demarcation lines from 2010 coloured by UKIP and SNP. Whoever comes in would have roughly the same measures about the economy and would have to account for political needs, because the country is cut roughly half-half.

The boundary review already had fudges to deal with outlier constituencies (IoW / Scottish island seats). In the case of IoW, the residents have made it fairly clear that they’d sooner be in one constituency where their votes are worth proportionally less than the average than split into two in a way that includes voters on the other side of the Solent.

The Boundary Commissions have generally been good at balancing out population numbers with geography and local govt boundaries, and the only real solution to equalise vote weight is some kind of party list system.

Commiserations to the Rovers fan and congratulations to the Barnet man. The Harriers, essentially in free-fall for three months, did dig out a gutsy performance against Barnet last Saturday, but that late winner for Dover did for the Rovers, I think.

I’m still smarting from that late City winner earlier this evening when we should have scored 60 seconds beforehand. We wuz robbed, but we’re now an unrecognisable side from the one that Sherwood inherited and we ought to stay up. Hopefully|!

As for the polls, not another Labour YouGov lead, surely? This is getting silly now. I would have bet my house on a tie or small Tory lead, something a little like the earlier Opinium. So, Mr YouGov, when are you going to revert to the mean? Or is your mean a small Labour lead now?

You must be living in a different area to me. There have been one or two posters in poor quality locations eg, near the Fountain Medical Centre but I have not seen any garden stakes and very few posters red/blue in Morley South. I drove through Wrenthorpe on the way to Wakefield and saw nothing. I finally saw my first garden stake in Wakefield for Mary Creagh!

They wanted to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 which I think is a good idea.

Not really – the real problem was it just lead to 50 fewer backbench MPs to hold the government to account. In such a centralised country as the UK, you probably want as many as possible, especially the way the Executive keeps expanding. Very little power has been handed over to other democratic bodies in England, and it being handed elsewhere is a reason for more democratic scrutiny and scrutinisers, not less and fewer.

The Lib Dems only agreed to the reduction on the understanding that there would elected representatives in the House of Lords to compensate. When the Tories rebelled, so as to keep their cushy retirement gigs, the Lib Dems, who were looking for an excuse to back out anyway, seized the chance.

Thanks for the link. It illustrates the multifaceted nature of the economy argument rather nicely.

Labour certainly landed a few punches a while back with the Cost Of Living Crisis line. However, in the run up to the campaign the momentum on economic arguments seemed to be shifting back to the Tories which was why I was expecting to hear more from them than we have.

It was also very much part of their original game plan to use an economic recovery story to support their VI. That was why the Telegraph story caught my eye with weak growth data robbing them of the opportunity to play lines like don’t let Labour wreck it.

It seems the Tories have struggled to find any other positive messages to fill the gap left by a mixed bag of issues on the economy.

Last ten YG polls give Labour a 1.3pt lead. Previous ten it was +1.0 lead. Looks like a very slow drift to Labour. If that continues it will give them about 2 point lead by polling day which will give them an good lead as the largest party but probably not enough to do deal with LD. SNP will still be the only two party combo to get us to Maj.